Berg Insight’s new research predicts a compound annual growth rate of 40.3%
The new research report from specialist IoT analyst Berg Insight states that the global satellite IoT communications market is growing at a good steady pace.
Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the surpassed 3.9 million in 2021 and is set to grow at a CAGR of 40.3% to reach 21.2 million units in 2026.
“The terrestrial technologies will grow in importance in the next five years and collaborations between satellite operators and mobile operators exploring new hybrid satellite-terrestrial connectivity opportunities such as the recent T-Mobile/SpaceX agreement will become common,” concludes Johan Fagerberg, Principal Analyst at Berg Insight.
The report points out that only about 10% of the Earth’s surface has access to terrestrial connectivity services so there is a massive opportunity for satellite IoT communications to complement terrestrial cellular and non-cellular networks in remote locations.
They are especially useful for applications in agriculture, asset tracking, maritime and intermodal transportation, oil and gas industry exploration, utilities, construction and governments.
Crowded out there
Both incumbent satellite operators and more than two dozen new initiatives are betting on the IoT connectivity market, according to the report which covers 44 satellite IoT operators. “Iridium, Orbcomm, Inmarsat and Globalstar are the largest satellite IoT network operators today”, says Fagerberg. Iridium grew its subscriber base by 21% in the last year and reached the number one spot serving 1.3 million subscribers.
Originally a dedicated satellite operator, Orbcomm has transitioned into an end-to-end solution provider, delivering services on its own satellite network as well as being a reseller partner of Inmarsat and others. At the end of 2021, the company had 1.1 million satellite IoT subscribers on its own and Inmarsat’s networks.
At the same time Globalstar reached 0.42 million subscribers. Other players with connections in the tens of thousands include for instance Kineis in France and Thuraya in the UAE.
New kids on the spatial block
In addition to the incumbent satellite operators a number of new initiatives have appeared on the market recently, such as Astrocast, AST SpaceMobile, CASC/CASIC, E-Space, Fleet Space Technologies, Hubble Network, Kepler Communications, Kineis, Ligado Networks, Lynk, Myriota, Omnispace, Skylo, Swarm Technologies (SpaceX) and Totum.
Many of them are based low-earth orbit nano satellites. Although some rely on proprietary connectivity technologies to support IoT devices, several are starting to leverage terrestrial wireless IoT connectivity technologies.
Those that use 3GPP 4G/5G technologies include:
• OQ Technology,
• AST SpaceMobile
• Omnispace
• Sateliot
• Galaxy Space
• Ligado Networks
• Lynk,
• Skylo
• Starlink.
The following run LoRaWAN:
• EchoStar Mobile
• Fossa Systems
• Lacuna Space
• Eutelsat.
The Hubble Network offers Bluetooth and Eutelsat also supports Sigfox.
Find out more about the report here.